


Haunt

by brasspetal



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Confessions, Depression, Developing Relationship, Grieving, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, I cannot stress the angst, Illness, M/M, Post-Canon, There will be a happy ending, prompt, they are both messes, what if Thomas wasn't at the plantation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-02-06 22:55:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12827862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brasspetal/pseuds/brasspetal
Summary: Silver searches for the shattered shards of their bond and Flint makes himself into a living ghost to torment him.





	1. The Entrammel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ElDiablito_SF](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/gifts).



> Thomas Hamilton wasn't at the plantation as Silver thought he would be. Flint has to escape it alone. Thomas remains in the past in this story.  
> This was a prompt from @twobrokenwyngs on tumblr given to me by @jadedbirch  
> I hope you like it! This turned into something a lot bigger than I had originally planned.

The night smothers itself against the billowing smoke. The plume itself claims the stars by blocking out their dim light. There is no moon to bask in as wolves would but Flint lifts his head to search for it anyway. The heat of those flames, now behind him, still lingers on his skin.

He had taken a torch to the plantation house with its gaping dark eyes and lit them up. He had given such a place a cleansing renewal. He heard the screaming earlier and the panicked attempt to douse his gift but it was to no avail. It wasn’t long that men turned their rage to him and he had used his make-shift blade to send them back to the dirt as they piled up to challenge him.

Haven’t they heard? Captain Flint has always been the devourer and now no one should wear its chains again.

He’d take his thumb, close one eye, and swipe it over the horizon through the haze of the smoke. He had a path and that gaping opening in the trees beyond the fence would be his.

It’s an absurd notion, isn’t it? To believe that your loved one had risen from the dead and waited for him in paradise.

This was the mouth of hell. He was sent to its jaws to find nothing so delicate inside of it. The dream is a falsity that rips open the cave that houses his heart once again. To relive that realization, that Thomas is in fact gone is a mocking agony for fools like him. A fool for believing so ignorantly that such a thing could be possible.

He had expected to find him tending the fields beneath the cloudless sky, awaiting his eventual arrival, as if Thomas Hamilton had become a prophet in his rose-colored memory.

The reality of it is never so beautiful. He should have known there’d be smoke, there’d be fire, there’d be a stained blade at his side. If anything, he’d make these men pay for destroying his illusion, for making him see the truth of it in its finality.

Is he to bury Thomas again and his memory once and for all? Is this yet another funeral of many that he will always owe him? His ghost demands more blood.

He cuts his way towards the horizon, through the silhouettes of nameless men that all thud in death at his boots. He watches the other prisoners attempt escape in coughing mania. Flint is calm in his rage. He’s accepted its claws with such willingness to return. Return to who he will always be. A man he can never burn lest he attempts self-immolation first.

These shadows created by the roaring flames that reach towards the sky behind him, dance at his feet. These shadows want more from him. They want what’s left but he’s reserved that small piece of himself for another fool. A fool that sent him to this hell in the first place.

He has a snarl to match the beasts in those woods and he wears it, as he climbs the collapsing fence.

The dark trees greet him like eerie shadow giants and he can still feel the lick of heat from that inferno behind him.

He’s overjoyed that it is now crumbling to ash and taking his wretched grief with it.   

\--

**Two Months Later**

To say that John Silver hated Bristol would be a dramatic understatement. John Silver fucking despised Bristol and all that resided here.

He takes a swig of his bottle of rum like the proper pirate he is and lets the outside air trap itself in his lungs. The crowd of dwindling people are disappearing, and he can prop himself up against the back of the tavern. They were going to buy this place not so long ago. They were going to make a go of it, whatever _it_ was. He guesses that was the problem. They had been pretending for a while now with hardly a word spoken between them most nights.

Until one rainy evening a month ago, he found her letter, tucked neatly in his jacket, folded beautifully. Her handwriting was always delicate. He’s read it enough times to tear the page by now. She was kind to him in her wording, her final gift before she left him for good.

In some ways, Silver never thought he deserved someone like Madi who was light given form. He knew she would never forgive him for his part in ending their war and Flint’s departure from their lives but he thought they could try again. He thought going someplace new could reconcile a deep need for pretending to be someone else again. What Silver failed to realize was that no matter where he ran away to, he’d take his one-legged self with him.

He had imagined warm nights spent above the tavern as proud new owners. In those imaginings, he always had two legs and Madi always smiled at him as if he’s earned it somehow. As if he has earned back her heart.

He glances down at his stump beside his crutch and proceeds to drink messily from the bottle.

This is the legacy of Long John Silver? To sleep in the space between dreams and this crooked reality he brought on himself.

“What the fuck am I doing here?” He asks no one.

His cruel mind supplies him with thoughts long buried, of a man he shouldn’t think on. A man who is happily reunited with his long lost love. It’s as simple as that, isn’t it? Exchange one pain for another. It has always been that way for Silver.

Why should this knowledge cut him rather than gladden his heart? He isn’t that much of a monster, is he? To want Flint’s misery to match his own. Flint deserved peace and against the wishes of so many Silver delivered it to him. It’s enough or at least he lied to himself that it is.

He stumbles with his crutch through the meandering blurry faces of nameless couples, of children playing in the soot of a puddle, of a fisherman bringing home his catch. He had smiled too long at one of them and they huddled together in fear of it. The one-legged creature come out of the night.  What’s happened? Where did the time go?

It was snatched away from them all.

He found his way to the docks and stood wearily looking out to the lighted ships that slumbered in the bay. He spots a silhouette of a mast that resembled the Walrus in size but he didn’t dare go near it for the mirage would banish from him for good.

“All ready, Captain.” Silver speaks aloud and he can hear the thudding of the boots echoing from a memory. Flint’s boots, walking the deck.

Memory Flint asks, “Where are we headed?”

And he knows it isn’t something Flint would ask because he always knew, didn’t he?

“We are headed to the end of the horizon.” Silver speaks to the far away silhouette and it earns him a scowl from one of the fishermen taking a piss over of the side.

Memory Flint’s voice is softer than usual when he questions, “What lies there?”

“Freedom. Freedom from you.” Silver replies with a stretched smile and he feels like laughing into forever. The kind of laugh that could crack him apart and he’d end up a sobbing drunk by the waterside.

Memory Flint supplies, “You have your freedom.”

“There is no such thing. It is an illusion.” Silver replies and he can feel his eyes well; burning with unshed tears.

“What’s an illusion?” The familiar voice is different, loud, more real than the memory he’s been conversing with. He entertains the idea that perhaps he has finally lost what little sanity he had been uselessly clinging onto. He turns slowly, gripping his crutch and spots the shadow figure come alive from this hell. He’s spooked into disbelief; his eyes widen with bewildered terror.

“You aren’t real.” Silver announces before he stumbles and collapses drunkenly to the cobblestone.

\--

There’s a moment of blissful darkness when he can sense the warmth of its embrace in its nothingness beyond which he can comprehend. He could remain here for eternity with thoughts disappearing as soon as they arrived. There’s no time there, no ceaseless wandering.

A bucket of cold water is splashed deliberately on him and he chokes against the onslaught of it. His eyes are blurred from the sudden awakening and he’s coughing with his mouth pressed against a floorboard.

“You’re an absolute goddamn mess.” Flint’s voice resounds and Silver’s eyes snap open in realization. Was it not a hallucination?

“Get up.” Flint barks viciously.

Silver stubbornly remains on the floor, his head swimming, his body aching.

“How is this possible? Why the fuck are you here?” Silver questions loudly towards Flint’s boots, it’s only that’s thing visible in his watery eye line at the moment.

“Get up!” Flint shouts and it booms across the room, nesting inside him.

Silver forces himself to sit up with a grunt and spots his crutch on the floor beside him. His hair is plastered to his neck messily and he finally looks up at the shadow that is very much alive. Flint towers over him like a blessed nightmare, his face hardened, the rage is set in his shoulders just as he remembered. They’re in a meager quiet fishermen’s hut.

“How can this be?” Silver asks.

“You sent me to hell, Mr. Silver.” Flint’s words are biting and they hold back the ferocity they wish to properly achieve.

“Where is Thomas? I gave him back to you.” Silver relays with growing desperation. He feels torn in two like a sheet of parchment, resting on the floor.

Flint grabs him suddenly and forces him up, his snarl is almost pressed against his mouth. Silver found such a notion to be intoxicating and his limbs are compliant with his wrath.

“Where is Thomas?” Silver repeats and Flint throws him onto the small stiff couch that rests in front of a dark fireplace. Silver struggles a moment and finally sits upright against the cushions.

“You wretched sad fool,” Flint replies, his teeth still bared, his features twitching with the roiling anger of it.

“Do enlighten me as to how the fuck you are here?” Silver snaps, his own irritation a crescendo.  

“Thomas wasn’t there. He was never there. You sent me to that godforsaken prison with a beleaguered hope.” Flint shouts and his voice stretches beyond the window, claiming the streets.

“I don’t understand. I was told he was there.” Silver replies and feels the crushing weight of a headache spark beneath his eyes.  

“He was never there!” Flint screams this time, vibrating the furniture with it.

Silver's chest is a cavity that soaks up the misery to claim as his own. He had paid them. He had made sure that Thomas Hamilton resided there.

“They lied.” Flint continues.

“I had thought…” Silver begins and then halts his speech. He couldn’t find the right words to collect against his weighted tongue. He searches the floor wildly with his glassy eyes.

“I burned it to the ground. All of it.” Flint replies; voice low.

Silver snaps his eyes to his, finding the paralleled darkness but he had lit a match beneath it.

His voice is quiet, “Why come here then? Why find me?”

“Was Madi your mirage as well?” Flint questions.

They dance around the answers blatantly and Silver’s voice wavers, “I am sorry that Thomas wasn’t there.”

“This is what you wanted.” Flint corrects and Silver feels the anger snap loose. It leaves him stranded within this sea between them. He forces himself up from the couch, sliding his crutch in front of him.

“This was never what I wanted!” Silver shouts back, his chest heaving from the effort. Through this haze of agony, Silver recognizes the uncontrollable nameless warmth bloom from knowing he’s real, he’s standing in front of him again.

“We are broken men, Mr. Silver. Look at what your treaty has wrought.” Flint adds with venom.

“You’re alive. You’re both alive. That is what—” Silver stops when Flint crowds him again. Their faces close enough to steal the air from the other. He almost stumbles back but holds steady against the scrutiny.

“We will be monsters through a false narrative.” Flint claims and Silver studies those green eyes boring into his. “You’ve silenced us for good.”

“I don’t care.” Silver repeats the echo from that miserable island.

He can feel the heated rage from Flint against his skin but he’d welcome his own destruction at his hands. Silver moves forward instead, closing the breathy distance and pressing his lips to that snarl. It’s like tasting the smoke risen from flames.

Flint steps back suddenly breaking the kiss, his eyes closed against it and Silver tries to form a bitter smile but it never reaches his lips.

“Why are you here? It isn’t just to haunt me.” Silver asks.

The flush rises in his cheeks but it isn’t fueled by anger.

Flint opens his eyes again to studies Silver’s. “I came here with the intention and thought of doing what you couldn’t do in that jungle.”

“You came here to kill me?” Silver questions and feels calmed by the admission.

“But you and I will never be free of each other.” Flint softly admits and he looks defeated, an odd expression that is foreign to Flint’s face.

“Why?” Silver pesters, and Flint shakes his head.

“You know why.”

He did know why. It’s the nameless destructive maelstrom that staked a claim in the creation of his character. The maelstrom that is Flint, that is them, that is the eroded battered connection.

“And I will haunt you. I will spend the time I have left on this horror of a continent and I will haunt you. You will never be free.” Flint darkly promises and Silver recognizes the shared attraction to destruction.

Silver releases a small unamused laugh, “What are we do then?” He walks forward to brazenly touch Flint but he steps just out of his grasp.

“A specter is a specter, you cannot touch it or mold it to your will.” Flint states and Silver’s grimaced smile fades.

“What the fuck does that mean?” His voice shakes and betrays his calm veneer.

“I will live beside you, breathe beside you but that is the extent. I will serve as a reminder. You will serve as a reminder to me. A reminder of what trusting Long John Silver has fooled me into." Flint replies cruelly and the coldness of it steals the small amount of warmth from the room.

“You cannot be serious.” Silver tilts his head in quiet confusion.

“I will remain and be your ghost and you will be mine but this will be the last time we speak, Mr. Silver.” Flint conveys with finality.

Silver watches him exit the hut, his boots softly thudding on the floor. He hears the soft click of the door and the roaring quiet that it leaves behind once shut.


	2. This Nightmare

Before the sun cracks open the sky, Silver likes to stand on the cusp of the sea. The tide attempts to reach him but it pulls away again before it claims his boot. He does this most mornings and sometimes convinces himself not to swim out into the waves, not to let Neptune carry him away. He spots a fisherman down the beach but they never wave a greeting. It’s as if he isn’t really here.

The dilapidated hut that passes for his house, used to seem listless in its brightness from this shore when Madi would put a candle in the window. Now, there is no candle and the windows resemble shut eyes.

He saw Flint this morning, taking up residence in the abandoned house down the shore a ways with a tumbledown porch. He can hear hammering from inside and he wouldn’t be surprised if Flint somehow built himself a brand new house out of the wreckage.

He deserves this. Whatever _this_ is. No one wants to speak to the one-legged drunk, no one sees him. John Silver is a storyteller and unable to use his voice. The only small comfort he has had in quite a while is the echoed sound of hammering.

He eyes the rum when he finds himself back inside the quiet confines of his abode. He feels trapped in this place as if the walls could bury him.

\--

Flint patched the hole that had been torn in the side of the house and now he needs to paint it. He hadn’t had time to stop and ponder on his current actions. It was a decision made on a whim. He wished to release his rage on the fool that claimed his thoughts but when he saw him lying on the cobblestone he couldn’t. He half expected to find him happily enjoying his life with Madi but that too was a false future. They are both broken, their pieces lost somewhere along the way. He had forgotten the twisted magnetic pull Silver contained for him. He’s volatile, ripped open, exposed and yet he can’t leave. They will share this limbo together.

That sad sorry house of Silver’s rests closed off from the morning light. Flint watches from the porch he’ll make new. He wants to feel rage, he wants to hate but when he spots Silver limping up the beach towards the town he feels nothing but despair.

He has a snarl for the sympathy that threatens him and he goes against his better judgment.

He stays far behind the wobbling figure but he follows. He follows Silver and observes passersby gawk at him with impolite curiosity and Flint wants to set fire to it. The urge to toss a torch in each window overtakes him like a possession but that war is over, this mess of man ended it and for what?

Flint glares at anyone that pays him mind. He’s here to be John Silver’s ghost but Flint thinks it’s the other way around. This world isn’t theirs any longer.

Silver enters a pub and Flint follows a moment after, observing the dirtied benches and one or two drunks still passed out from the night before.

He watches Silver drink as the sun rises. He watches him from the shadows unseen. He should be putting his effort into that house and not wasting the daylight but he’s transfixed by Silver’s blatant disregard for himself. Where has his rage gone?

Sometime later, Silver passes out and spills the last contents of his drink. He observes the barkeep scream obscenities and toss him out in the alleyway. He gets up with the thought to leave, to head back to his wreck of wood and ignore Silver’s dealings.

His feet take him to the alley though and Silver lies there, silent and still against the cobblestone once again. Was this an empathetic twisted thread he feels the tug of? Or is this something darker, a recognition of his self-awareness through guilt?

He sees someone approach Silver to rifle through his things. Flint knows he should let this happen. He did this to himself but he whistles once and the pickpocket with a dirty face scurries back into the shadows like the mouse that he is. He approaches Silver with a sigh and shoves him once with his boot. He doesn’t stir.

He knows he’s lost his goddamn mind and is going against the cruel promise he just made but it’s not as if Silver will remember. He grabs Silver’s crutch from the ground and sets his arm over his shoulder to slowly lift him. He grunts from the effort, he’s heavier than he had anticipated or perhaps Flint is losing his touch.

He carries him beyond the town to the sand lit up by the sun once again. Silver’s head lulls against his shoulder and he half drags him towards his house that looks like a burn mark on the beach.

He shoves the door open once he reaches it and stumbles inside, catching a glimpse of the dusty furniture. He sets Silver on the nearest chair and observes the darkened closed off space that no light escapes. It’s as if he’s stepped into a memory that isn’t his. A memory of Madi and Silver living here together, trying to make something out of what was left.

He imagines that he and Thomas would have run into the same theme of problems if he had been alive. Flint would have shut himself away at one point. He’d have let Thomas down. Was it better this way then? That Thomas never knew Captain Flint?

He glances back at Silver who is still very much unconscious with his hair resting messily over his face. The rise and fall of his chest pulls something loose out of Flint. Something he can do without, something he leaves behind as he walks out of the front door.

He’s a sorry excuse for a ghost.

\--

Weeks blur into a collection of unrecognizable days. Silver lets those days swim in front of him to attempt to remind him that time is a precious thing but all it is now is a repetitive descent. The hammering remains and Silver watches as Flint’s porch is rebuilt. He watches that house begin to look like something worth living in. The light collects around it like an orb and Silver grimaces at the sight.

He didn’t go into town this day. He’s sitting in the sand with his half-empty bottle of rum and takes a long swig, his neck bared to the light. Lately, he’s been waking up at home from his drunken stupors instead of face first in the street. He doesn’t know how exactly he manages that.

He forces himself up from the sand, leaving his bottle there to mark his place as if moments can be bookmarked. He limps slowly towards the hammering and the light, he shields his eyes giving himself a better view of Flint holding a nail over a smooth board of wood.

“You won.” Silver declares bitterly, “Whatever this is…you’ve won, as you always do, as you always will.”

He thinks it’s the rum swimming through his thoughts that has him attempting to converse with a specter.

Flint stops for a moment, his back heaving before resting the nail against the wood and hammering it in again. It’s louder than it was before, or it seems to be. If anything it’s a small communication, an acknowledgment of his existence.  He can feel the pent-up rage heating his skin more volatile than the sun.

“Come to dinner, you don’t have to speak a word to me. I have rum and…rum but I’m not very good at sharing.” Silver knows he sounds pathetically drunk, for which he is.

Flint throws down his hammer and stalks into his house, slamming the door loudly behind him. It seems he was done for the day.

Silver leans forward on his crutch and snatches the hammer from the railing of the porch and limps away with it. He isn’t above being petty, especially now. What did it matter?

He reaches the spot where his rum still rests in the sand and observes the old nondescript hammer in his palms. It’s just a hammer and yet it’s the silence between them all at once. He tosses it far out into the waves and stumbles from the effort, collapsing into the sand. He hums something that resembles a laugh to himself and the sound lacks any meaning.

He drinks more of the rum beside him until there are no stars, no beach, no figure hidden away to stop him. He doesn’t think he dreams anymore. There are no simplicities afforded to him here.

By the next morning, he wakes to hammering again as if the day has started over as if he’s existing in a loop. When he blinks his eyes open to the wretched sun he sees the shadow of Flint’s face above his, only the image fades and the hammering remains.

He forces himself to sit up, his hair is covered in sand and the blurred landscape of the beach offers nothing but indiscernible dark shapes.  He ignores the general direction of Flint and heads for his house, tracking sand and mud inside without care.

He stops in the doorway when he spots a sack that wasn’t there before sitting on the rickety kitchen table beside a vase of stems; the flowers crumbled long ago. He shuts the door behind him to block out the light fighting its way inside and stumbles with his crutch over to the table.

He hesitantly touches the rough material that looks new, unused but dusty all the same.

Inside the sack, is a loaf of bread, two apples, and a tomato. They look fresh, ripe as if just plucked from the soil. He bites into the apple without thought and revels in the sweetness that lingers on his tongue. He peers down at the fresh fruit noticing his dirty palms for the first time and his dirty fingers as if he dug himself a grave in the dirt with his bare hands.

The tears come unbidden and he lets them create tracks down his cheeks and catch in his beard. He slides down to the floor where stray dead leaves have collected and weeps unabashed, holding the apple as if it’s the most precious thing. He turns it in his fingers and presses into the skin of it, leaving fingerprint smudges behind on the shine.

Flint did this. He tore him open once again and has spoken to him without a voice. He gave him a mirror and Silver knows he needs to wake up. He just needs to wake up. The nightmare has lasted beyond his concept of time. His quiet sobs fail to cease for a while yet and he’s given his tears to the boards beneath him by now. They plant sorrow in the sand that holds this house together like fragile bones.

 _‘Take me instead.’_ He thinks _, ‘Take all this back.’_

He didn’t want to be John Silver any longer but no matter how or where he hid, John Silver would be in that shadow when he sleeps. The self he built is inescapable.

By mid-day, Silver wills himself out of that tomb of a house and bathes in the sea. He swims with the current and the tide that threatens to hold him under but he’s used to the struggle. He’s used to the turbulent relationship he has with the sea. A relationship that is much like the one with Flint.

The dirt is mostly gone from his skin and replaced by sand; always sand. The shore couldn’t offer him any less. He’s sober at least but he thinks it’s because he’s run out of rum.

The hammering he has grown so used to, like the ticking of a clock, suddenly ceases and there’s a crash from down the beach. Silver turns his attention to Flint’s house to see his figure collapsed onto his new porch.

He stabs his crutch in the wet sand and heads for that place of light once again.

“James!” He yells and only the sound of the apathetic tumbling of waves answers him.

He quickens his pace, his breath releasing in short bursts as he nears the delicate house beneath the sleepy sun.

Flint is silently still lying on the ground of his porch. The hammer is next to him that has fallen out of his hand and Silver limps up onto the sturdy new wood.

“James…” He tries again but he doesn’t stir.

He uses the railing for support as he bends down to shake his shoulder. The horrid thought that twists his heart, that Flint is possibly lying dead before him, strikes him like a lash from nowhere. He forces Flint to roll over and rests his head on his chest. Silver’s entire body is trembling, he can’t hold still.

To his relief, he feels the rise and fall of Flint’s chest, pressed against his ear and the small thudding of his heart. His skin, however, feels as though there is a fire beneath it, lit up from the inside. Silver rests his palm on his forehead and the fever quickly heats his fingers.

“Jesus…” Silver breathes.

Flint had clearly been ill and stubbornly kept working through it.

Silver rests most of his weight on his crutch as he lifts Flint’s arm over his shoulder and grunts, struggling to bring him to his height. He staggers almost pulling them back down again and finally reaches the front door which he shoves open.

Inside, fresh wood greets him where a hole once caved the house in. There is a couch but not much else in terms of furniture but it is still more beautiful than the darkness his house provokes. He rests Flint on the cushions and he pliantly collapses onto it.

Silver straightens himself, out of breath as sweat collects at the back of his neck. His hands are shaking, he feels like the world is tilting but he can’t disappear now, not now.

If Silver is going to do anything with the time he has in this nightmare it would be to make sure Flint out lives this misery with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some hurt/comfort headed your way! I promise the last chapter won't take as long this time! Thank you :)


	3. Don't Leave

He’s drowning.

The waves pull Flint under burning his skin; his skin which feels weather-beaten like the old familiar flag that was lost long ago. Who is he without it? Without his ship? Without the hope of complacency?

He saw Thomas waiting for him with open arms, he dreamt it like a paradise of his own making. He corrupted himself with it and felt it bury his heart. There is no true peace, there never was. He can feel the lightning in his bones, and hear the thunder crashing in his ears.

He’s drowning.

At least until he feels his face break the surface of the offending liquid. He gathers the air in his lungs on a coughing gasp.

The world is a blurry mess of colors and shapes. The sounds are muted except for the thunder which is alive outside the shaky window panes. He’s soaking wet and shivering in what appears to be a bath. The roof he recently repaired is above him and Silver’s tired face blocks his view of it.

“I had to bring your fever down. Were you trying to work yourself to death? You nearly succeeded if so.”  Silver comments and his words are long winded as usual. Flint ignores the phantom in front of him and sits up. He feels disoriented from the effort and nearly slips when he stands. There’s a moment of hesitation when he notices Silver retreat from giving him any aid.

Flint steps over the lid of the tub and stumbles, his legs are weak. He feels like the cold hand of death itself. He falls to the floor, his palms press into the wood but Silver remains in his periphery. He breathes in the air that crowds his chest. His lungs feel as though trees have sprouted inside them.

He wants to convey that he wishes Silver to leave and to take his misery with him but he found It’s better to pretend he isn’t even in the room. He’d find a way back inside like his very own rodent infestation.

“I’m sober and I plan on making you some soup whether you want me here or not.” Silver relays quietly and Flint’s resolve begins to chip away at the vulnerability in his tone.

Silver did this to himself, did this to Flint, to them and yet Flint still can’t abandon certain sympathies. He wishes he could cut that part of himself out and leave it to the wolves but he’d die without it.

_Without him._

The realization isn’t a new one. They have been marooned on this shore for some time; dwindling in the decay.

The thunder shakes the window panes again and he can hear the rain smack against the glass. The wind is fury but he knows the sea is angrier.

\--

Silver lets the fire in the stove eat the wood he’s given it and he heats a vegetable soup he’s thrown together. It lacks flavor but his cooking skills haven't improved.

He tightens his fingers into fists to quell the shaking that’s erupted. He feels tight in his skin as if he could snap like a frayed rope into a gale. There is always anticipation, one of dread, one of doubt, and one indiscernible to all the others.

He could live like this, couldn’t he? Being close to Flint, in the same space but without his acknowledgment. He’s lived like this before when he first joined the Walrus crew. It’s as if that time ago Flint deliberately ignored him out of some prophesized spite. He suspects Flint thought he would betray him some way or another but _this_ , he never wanted this for him. He truly believed Thomas was alive and he thought he was giving him some sort of veiled peace however fleeting.

A shadow within him tells him that it’s a lie, that all he ever wants is for Flint to share in his misery. He’s let those shadows collect over the years like souvenirs of past selves and now that is all that’s left, one shadow after another.

The storm outside beckons him outside with its rage and he thinks if Flint hadn’t been ill upstairs in this house then he’d take its offer. He’d see what the storm has for him.

He peers outside the window to catch a brilliant flash of lightning over the monstrous waves. Had Flint conjured this once again like the one that led them to the Doldrums?

Silver takes the bowl of hot soup upstairs with a wooden spoon resting inside of it and sets it on the bedside table. Flint’s eyes open in a hazy fever driven delirium and he stares beyond him to the storm; his creation.

Silver remains a silhouette against the window fidgeting in the low lantern light and his fingers flinch on his crutch. He says nothing although he wishes to ask Flint to unmake him as if such a thing is possible. The storm speaks for them both. It speaks of the anger, resentment, and terror they still have for one another. It’s enough for now, he’ll take it. There’s a loud crash that shakes the windows again, threatening to tear them loose and he limps from the room.

Back in the kitchen, he stares as if in a trance at the open space of Flint’s house. He allows himself a fleeting moment of continued torment to imagine a shadow, a shadow that could possibly resemble Flint’s Thomas. The shadow would take his place in its blurry misshapen hope and John would be banished from this house of light.

“You’re not here,” he says to the shadows, “But if you were…I’d want you to condemn me from this place.”

He doesn’t belong here, where things begin, but however wrong his shape is, he has found a corner like the spider he’s become. It’s only the thunder that answers him; loud, sharp and unapologetic with its chaotic fury.

He says in barely a breath, “I’m sorry.” His own voice is unrecognizable.

He apologizes to a man who isn’t there, to a storm that won’t relent and to the ill man upstairs. He blows out a nearby candle and watches the smoke rise in a wisp before filling the bowl with water from a pitcher. He takes it back to Flint’s room where he lies restless but in slumber.

Silver soaks a soft cloth in the cool water and sits on the edge of the bed where he dabs it across Flint’s brow. His face twitches but he doesn’t wake. He leans into the coolness and Silver wrings out the cloth to give him more.

“I wondered for a time how it was that we became all that we had left but I realized that it’s always been that way from the beginning. The moment you and I dove into the sea to steal the Spanish Warship, I felt the spiral and I let the misery in. I let you behind broken walls without your knowledge and without even my own.” Silver recalls and lets the cloth drip across Flint’s cheeks before softly setting it against his forehead. He leans into it again and Silver cradles Flint’s face against the cloth.

Silver observes the pallor of his skin, the parting of his lips, the freckles that rest in the beginnings of crows feet.  He continues softly, “I think I’ve loved you for a very long time.”

He lets the words loose and he immediately feels a new burden lift, although there are familiar ones left behind in its wake.

Flint appears completely lost in his fever dream and unaware of the surrender Silver has given him but it's better to leave it in a limbo between them both. Spoken but not heard.

Lightning snaps and strikes close to the house, startling Silver who peers wide-eyed out of the window. The rain rushes down the glass like tears and he moves to the other side of the bed. He throws his crutch down on the floor and moves back to rest his head on the empty pillow beside Flint. He watches the storm snap patterns across the ceiling in feral violence. The chaos of it is a lullaby and he finds sleep.

His dreams are not kind to him. They show him things he will never have and someone he will never be again. He’s a young man with a destructive smile running through the wrecks of Nassau but what he finds instead in the center like a maze is an old man that resembles himself. He’s gripping a dull crutch, his long gray hair stretches over his shoulders. He squints at Silver, holding a lantern and says, “It wasn’t time. Not time yet for me to return to the sea.”

“Who are you?” Silver asks but he knows he’s looking at a distorted future.

“They call me Flint.” He speaks softly.

There are shards of glass beneath his feet and the pain of it which tears into his skin jolts him awake. He blinks at the dark shadows above him. The world comes into focus.

The bed is shaking but not because of him. He turns his head against the scratchy pillow to see that Flint is shivering and his eyes are shut, lost in a half-sleep.

Silver quickly gets up from the bed, nearly toppling over before grabbing a hold of his crutch and he grabs a thin blanket that’s covering the chair. He throws it immediately over Flint who appears unresponsive. He stabs his crutch quickly into the hallway and down to the kitchen to fill the bowl once again with water before traversing the stairs. The storm cracks and growls at him on his short journey. It seems to have made its home here with them; nestled like a beast against the wooden boards.

Once inside the room, he dips the cloth and strokes it gently over Flint’s exposed throat, up to his chin, to his cheeks, over his nose. He dabs it lightly across his pale lips. Flint trembles out an incoherent word and Silver leans in closer to better hear it. He moves the cloth gently to his forehead and holds it there but the shaking doesn’t abate.  

“You’re…” Flint begins. He swallows thickly and Silver hovers over him to listen. “…not…”

Then nothing. Flint’s stammers are snuffed out like a candle but the violence of the trembling remains.

Silver can’t help but finish the sentence for him. _‘You’re not welcome here.’_

It’s the first words he’s heard Flint speak in a long while. It makes sense with its nostalgic cruelty.

“I’m not leaving you.” Silver answers in a soft whisper and it’s then the shaking begins to slow. Silver leans back, leaving the cloth on Flint’s forehead and presses the blanket tightly against Flint’s sides to tuck him in.

Silver feels sweat collect in the hollow of his throat and he knows he must resemble Flint’s pallor. His fingers are numb and his body feels as though it’s made of knives.

He watches Flint’s pinched expression slacken and his trembles subside.

“I can’t leave.” Silver says.

He’s trapped here even if there was no storm seeking him out, waiting for him to step outside.

He can’t leave. He can never leave. This is the place in between, their place. This is where he’s set himself like a blurry mural against the wall.

He stumbles quickly down the stairs and falls to the floor beside one of the cupboards and opens it with a squeak. He saw it there earlier. The bottle of rum that Flint bought but didn’t partake in. He reaches with his twitching fingers up to the counter and grabs the used glass off of it. He sets it on the floor in front of him and struggles with popping the cork off with his teeth.

Once it's released he pours only a little into the glass and it’s enough to swim uselessly in his mouth when he drinks it.

This was it. This had to be it for now.

He runs his hands over his face feeling the hot tears sting the corners of his eyes once again and he moves forward, pressing his palms forcefully to the floor beside the bottle.

 _Flint_ needs him. He can’t disappear back inside himself. 

Silver pushes himself to stand and he grabs the bottle from the floor. He limps towards the front door and swings it open. The wind assaults him, creating wild patterns in his hair as he steps out onto the porch. The storm howls at him in delight and Silver throws the bottle into the darkness of the shore where waves are eating up the sand. “You can have it.” He says and lightning cracks. He’s soaked already from the ferocious rain.

“But don’t take him.” Silver warns quietly.

\--

The next morning, the sun is unable to break through the barrier of dark clouds that are housed above them. Its fury has lessened but the wind remains. Silver had slept beside Flint once again in that stiff bed and when he wakes he turns to glance at his sleeping face. He looks pained as if there is something beyond his illness that troubles him.

Silver lets the cruel thoughts crowd him again like vipers. Flint could die. He knows this. He’s even pictured it in the back of his mind, playing out. Silver would die too. He’d take them both back to the sea in its rage. He’d sink with Flint in his arms like two stones meant for the deep.

A tear escapes from his eyelash and snakes across the bridge of his nose before connecting with the pillow beneath his head. He daringly moves in close and reaches out to rest his palm on Flint’s arm before connecting his body to his. He rests his head on his chest to feel the intake of his breath. The last thing in this bastion of a wasteland that matters.

“You are in everything. No matter where I look, there is a reflection and I see your face with mine beneath my eyes. When did the joining happen? I’ve tried to pinpoint the exact moment when we melded and all I see are a collection of moments, noiseless and fleeting. Your lips move with mine and we’ve yet to speak.” Silver whispers against Flint’s damp shirt.

His hands are shaking and his skin is tight once again, pulling him into a bow. “There is nothing beyond you and I. That is the problem we’ve faced. We have sought things beyond this void of ours and it stretched us thin, pulled us apart as if the stitches we shared could be cut. I wanted them cut as you have but even now I see new ones forming and I am done. I am defeated for you.”

He weeps softly against Flint’s chest, his eyes shutting tight and he groans against those tears that connect them, “I survive by you.”

His fingers bunch the blanket at Flint’s waist and he wants to press himself inside Flint. He wants to evaporate into his skin and feel whole once again. His sobs crescendo into something pitiable.

The fall. He thinks it happened after the Spanish Warship in that lull where they entered the others orbit. He put it away, tried to lessen it, reduce it to ash. ‘ _there is no we’_

Then they were caged on Maroon island and Silver knew then that all he wished to do was find Flint. _‘where are you’_

“Don’t leave without me.” Silver speaks and a burst of rain batters the windows, blurring the world outside.

\--

By mid-day, the light is still unable to break free. Silver sits in the wooden chair beside Flint who has yet to wake and sets a spoon of broth to his lips but he doesn’t stir. He sighs and presses a wet cloth to his mouth instead for it to leak onto his tongue.

They’ve run out of food for Silver to cook and so he slips his jacket on that still rests on the chair downstairs. He opens the front door and steps beyond the porch, letting himself get soaked through by the rain.

He spots the bottle of rum he tossed out into the storm, sitting snuggly in the sand and he moves his eyes away from it, limping onwards beyond it.

There’s a wall of gray wet that traps itself at the beginnings of the town, suffocating and forbidding. He observes on his walk the townspeople that scurry from one doorway to the next not paying him any mind.

It’s in the market that he sees Abigail or he thinks he sees her. She’s wearing a soft red dress and her dark hair is beautifully braided against her back. He attempts to blink away the illusion but it doesn’t dissipate from his vision. He stands stalk-still observing the red standing out in all the gray like a mark in a book; a reminder. He turns from her, from the past and fills a small sack of fruit before paying in coin for it.

“Is there any work you have available?” Silver asks, attempting to smile but he knows the charm isn’t there beneath the grimness.

“No work for drunken dogs.” The man at the market stands states.

“Well, then it’s a good thing I’m not either of those, isn’t it?” Silver adds with a strained smirk and the man sneers at him.

“Seen you, comin’ outta the tavern. Ain’t no good come from you.” He says and Silver snatches the bag of fruit from the stand before hobbling away.

He glances back to see that the figure in the red dress is gone as if she was never there. Perhaps, John Silver is finally losing his mind and wouldn’t that be fitting, living at world’s end.

He journey’s back through the town, gazing ahead at the veil of fog that’s claims the edges of the beach below. There is a sense of passing through an invisible doorway once he presses his crutch into the sand. The rain even grows heavier until rivulets are running down his face.

He passes by his dark house like a hibernating creature and heads towards Flint’s at the end by the cliff that reaches out beckoning. He doesn’t glance at the rum bottle resting in the sand as he nears the porch and pushes the front door open. Thunder cracks loudly warning him to stay indoors.

He rests against the cupboard in the kitchen, gathering his breath. His arm aches from fighting the sand with his crutch and he sets the sack of fruits on the table. They topple chaotically out and he blinks at an apple that rolls towards the edge absently. He grabs it before it falls and bites into it, chewing slowly as he heads towards the stairs.

It’s upstairs that he notices Flint’s bedroom door is shut. He hadn’t shut it before he left. He attempts to turn the doorknob but it sticks and he jiggles it breathlessly.

It’s locked. 

Silver scoffs, holding the partially eaten apple along with his crutch. He knocks twice, “Locking me out now, are we?”

There is no answer.

“James…” Silver says to the closed door and he listens closely but only the brewing storm has answers for him.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some stubborn Flint up next! Thank you so much for reading! :)


	4. Return

“James…” The soft sound of Silver’s voice carries muffled from beneath the door. It worms its way beneath his skin like a parasite.

Flint lies on his back, sweat collecting on his temples and his thoughts are clear from delirium.

He heard everything Silver spoke to him when he rested on his chest. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t speak but he heard. A confession like the storm itself. One that is formed from such reckless abandon. Something he wants to believe is born out of selfishness but his heart hammers against his ribcage as a reminder. _‘where are you’_

‘where are you’

Flint is locked away, away from him. He can’t be near him, not now. His thoughts are playing tricks, they linger and he wants to reach out and touch. He wants to feel warm skin beneath his fingertips.

He had once thought it may have been born out of loneliness, this twisted pull to Silver but he knows it isn’t. It was born from darkness. The darkness they created together, that he cultivated in him.  

The grief that once rested in slumber has awoken and he can’t find a way to stop it from consuming him. He was meant to be in a place of light, however false it may have been constructed.

“I got us some food,” Silver’s voice again, so soft, so uncertain. He doesn’t sound the same anymore. It tightens Flint’s chest and he is unsure of what he grieves for.

He can’t let the fiend in, he’ll tame him like a false lullaby.

The storm outside is a relief, it blocks out the next thing Silver whispers and he hears the sound of the crutch tapping down the stairs. He’s leaving for now and it’s enough. It’s enough to get his thoughts in order.

He feels picked clean as if a vulture had nested here to leave his bones. He sits up and presses his bare feet to the floor to watch the skin fade white from the pressure. He has to breathe.

He stands up quickly, nearly falling from his weakened state and pulls the window wide open. Rain immediately whips his face and he smothers it towards the wind.

He hears pounding on his door again over the loud thunder and he steps back from the sill.

“Are you trying to worsen the illness?” Silver asks in muffled irritation.

He continues, his words blocked out by another burst of thunder and Flint attempts to smile. It stretches his tired face at an odd angle. The wet glass distorts his features.

“Haven’t we paid our dues through silence long enough?” Silver yells over the wind and he hits the door with his crutch before Flint finally shuts the window. His shirt is soaked with rainwater and he was half-tempted to dive onto the sand below and just embrace the sea. Would their rope finally sever between them?

Flint slumps into the seat beside the window sill and watches the flickering candle beside his bed. There’s a cold bowl of soup that waits there uneaten. Silver’s protests are quiet now and he listens to the slam of a door shaking the glass.

He swallows thickly, the silence now in its true form. His tongue feels heavy, his head is throbbing and he stands from the chair. He moves to peer out of the other curtainless window that faces the sea.

He spots Silver standing on the shore leaning on his crutch glaring at a bottle of rum in the sand. He’s but a smudge as raindrops cloud his vision. He studies his slumped shoulders from afar and the indecision rooting him beside the sea as if he’s becoming a tree.

The rain lessens but still dampens his hair and the harsh wind carries it wildly around his face. Flint is a tree too, unable to move from the window.

He should leave him to his fate. He should lie down in bed. He should leave the door locked until he doesn’t hear the sound of the crutch any longer.  He feared seeing him could crumble that old fury in his bones.

They are merely haunting this beach, the only two presumably left of their kind. Flint is punishing himself for believing in a way out of this and he’s punishing Silver for giving him that last glimmer of hope.

Although, he’s not sure what John Silver deserves but it isn’t this. To speak to glass bottles and wake up in strange places. Such a thought leaves him empty as if floating in the dark between the waves. Where does one go from here? They are both pressing on opposite sides of a stone wall as if they haven’t truly been able to reach one another.

Flint rests his hand on the window frame feeling hazy from the background of the illness dissipating and he watches Silver still standing in the rain as if he’s conversing with that wretched bottle. He’d probably see the cliffs between the slosh of rum and the faint clink of swords. He’d probably say: _‘can’t that be enough and there still be trust between us’_

Flint can hear his voice as if he’s standing beside him in the room. The old Silver, the one that still held a smile behind his teeth whether it was coy or genuine. The old Silver before he gave up his flesh for their lost crew.

Flint’s been carrying around John Silver’s heart in his pocket without realizing it. He’s held it between his sword and his palm. That is why they’re trapped together. Silver also held Flint’s heart between his tongue and teeth, between his fingers and his crutch. He doesn’t know when this unstable form of love climbed into his skin. A part of him has been replaced by it.

Here they stand, two statues to the sea, to the inevitable and to the cage they both bear. He’s weary, ready for sleep but he can’t step away from this window. Not yet.

He’s afraid he’ll disappear.

Flint is caught off guard by this thought. He’s afraid Silver will fade into the blur of the raindrops as if he was never there at all and his heart panics.

He’s losing him.

He releases a harsh breath and it sounds like a whimper on the verge of evolving into a sob. He leans forward, resting his forehead against the window frame and tries to fight against the onslaught of it.

Tears release themselves from his cheeks to disappear below him and he lets out a soft cry.

He’s not sure what there is to forgive any longer, what he’s searching for. This has never been about forgiving Silver because the blame has lost its potency.

He inhales the stale air around him with a loud tremble and leans back to stand upright. His face is wet and he’s exhausted but what he feared seemed to come to pass for a terrifying moment.

Out of the window, the smudge that was Silver is gone, as is the bottle of rum.

He unlocks the bedroom door and steps softly down the stairs. The boards creak giving away his position as he descends and he sees Silver sitting on the couch cradling the bottle. He doesn’t look at Flint but Flint can tell he knows he’s there by the slump that forms in his shoulders.

“I was going to go home but there’s nothing there,” Silver quietly speaks and he sounds dangerously done.

Flint says nothing but he’s growing tired of the cruel game between them. Silver pops the cork out of the bottle and grips it tightly between his palms.

“I’m sorry…that I’m not Thomas,” Silver's voice shakes and Flint’s rage bubbles beneath his skin once again. He stalks forward menacingly and rips the bottle out of Silver’s hands as he flinches in surprise.

Flint throws it forcefully against the wall, smashing it and relieving all of the contents inside.

Silver stands with a trembling yell, “Speak!”  

They stand there staring at one another, seeing one another. Silver’s eyes are wild, wet and searching his face, pleading with him.

“James..” Silver replies, his voice wrecked and he looks the same way he did in that forest.

“This is a fucking nightmare,” Silver adds, echoing like a lost memory.

Flint swallows and then finally speaks, “I thought he was…” He halts his speech, unable to gain composure, on the verge of weeping into the floor. “…alive. I wanted Thomas to stop….this rage, this darkness but he’s gone…he’s truly gone.”

He collapses then with no will left, the illness still weakens his limbs and he weeps softly, staring down at his palms as if he’s seeing them for the first time. He hears the tapping of the crutch near him and he knows Silver is about to kneel before him, he knows he’s about to see his face in front of his, matching his grief like a mirror.

“I need you to go,” Flint rasps and the crutch stops, he can feel the snap of Silver’s pain from such a statement drift towards him like a fog.

“I don’t have anywhere to go,” Silver replies with his own brand of anguish. It’s tearing him apart.

“I heard everything, your confession when I was lying in bed and your head was on my chest,” Flint admits and pushes himself up from the floor daring himself to finally look at Silver.

He looks devastated, tears stream down his face and collect in his beard. He’s thinner, the exhaustion in his eyes wanes on him perpetually. He doesn’t resemble any of his false personas, now he is just a man, a mirror for Flint to rage at.

“I…” Silver begins and Flint interrupts with, “No. You aren’t sorry for any of it. I can see it.”

Silver’s face falls to a new form of grief and his expression feigns stoicism even if tears are still escaping from his eyes.

“Do you really believe I’m that monstrous? That I’m not capable of being sympathetic to your grief for him?” Silver questions and Flint can’t stay in this room much longer, he can’t hold those eyes to his much longer.

“There is no pretending between us, why bother? We are out in the open, breathing the same air,” Flint states and Silver shakes his head.

“I thought I was giving him back to you and a part of me resented that but I did not wish him dead. I didn’t want this,” Silver confesses.

“You wished me to be a part of your misery and so I became apart of it,” Flint speaks as though it’s a gift and despises the way the words hang in the air.

“This is your misery that I’m carrying too, with mine. You think I conjured this darkness? You think I want this hell for us? You truly hate me if you believe that,” Silver’s words crumble but Flint knows he’s asking.

“I don’t hate you, that is the problem. I wish I hated you. It would make our parting much easier, this space of torment wouldn’t exist between the two of us,” Flint relays and Silver’s features twitch in confusion.

“I don’t understand,” Silver speaks and Flint shakes his head again.

“You’re lying. You do. You understand perfectly well,” Flint replies, “My affinity for you has always been a burden.”

The words sound harsher than he intended and he watches the added sorrow on Silver’s face.

“What do you want from me?” Silver ventures and Flint observes him with soft despair. The anger has burned away.

“I want you to live your life, to repair your house, remove the old memories, and to stop wandering, to stop speaking into bottles. I need you to leave because all we do now is torment one another. I need to grieve and you need to grieve. We both need time and if in that time you don’t find any solace then that is your own undoing, not mine but if you do find some measure of peace (however long that takes for either of us) then we can speak again but only then. I can’t do this, not like this. We are destroying one another,” Flint feels the words leave him like a weight and he can breathe again.

Silver points towards the window facing the sea and says, “That house holds nothing for me.”

“Then give it something to hold but it must be your choice not mine. I cannot be a part of it. We must attempt to heal separately before any reconciliation can be made. We must live for ourselves not each other. Do you understand?” Flint breathes, he feels as though he could collapse from the exhaustion in his bones.

“I do,” Silver says softly, blinking at him with melancholy acceptance, “I understand.”

He observes Silver, to take in his form, memorizing the deep blue of his eyes and Flint hopes they can find a balance beyond this torture.

The rage is still there and it will always be there, however dormant it may seem but it would be there in any world. It would have remained in a world with Thomas, it would have been nourished in a world with his war and it is here in this limbo. It is part of the makeup of who he is.

He listens to the tapping of the crutch behind him and then the door open releasing the sound of crashing waves on the shore. He can hear Silver hesitate at the threshold, wishing to toss words at him but not knowing which ones fit properly on his tongue.

Flint has nothing more to say, to offer him, he is not meant to console or mend any broken heart. Silver will have to find a way to do that on his own the same as Flint.

“I’m not your villain,” Silver whispers before limping outside and softly shutting the door to silence.

Flint doesn’t wish to turn him into one of his demons, like all the others but only time will tell.

He ascends the stairs back to his quiet room and lies down on his bed; his eyes heavy. His palm rests over his beating heart as he remembers the feel of Silver’s head lying on his chest. He’s an imprint as if they slotted together like sand and sea.

Flint’s never loved someone like he loves Silver, with open intoxicating rage. It’s terrified him for so long that he’s hardly let himself examine it but beneath the surface, there lies something he’s unable to decipher. It is a want, a need, a longing for the future. A fragile vision of something for both of them that has blurred and distorted through time. It still remains, however, and he thinks that’s enough to hope for.

He’s not sure when it was that he realized there were hearts to give between them but he’s buried it, like everything else for a later time, always later.

Now, he has nothing but _time_ to unearth his own horrors, to look them in the mirror and say _‘return to the sea’_

_Return._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up is the healing, so you have made it through most of the angst xD I hope you are enjoying this! :)


	5. Circle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a warning: Mild ideation to self-harm but nothing is acted on.

**\--Fall--**

**\--**

The sun is trapped beneath the clouds, unwilling to greet him. He thinks it's just as well, he’s used to wandering in the dark; that place between light and shadow.

John Silver stands nude on the beach with only his crutch; the malformed bone beneath him. He limps to the edge of the sea until the waves decide to take him, leaving his crutch in the sand. He thought about not returning to any shore but he doesn’t want to make himself into a sacrifice to this limbo.

Beneath the grime of time, he’s still the same survivor.

Today, he needs to be cleansed by the sea, to wash off the dirt left by the storm. There is only a light drizzle now that is like a thin mist to the air. He breathes it in while bobbing in the water.

There are no more storms on the horizon, only the hazy light that fights its way through the clouds. Silver used to think that their path was linear, straight across an invisible divide, to the center; like a shortcut through a maze. But their path is a circle. It wraps around everything and it loops back on itself; overlaps like a blanket of stars. He thought they were far away from the beginnings of it but he was wrong, they’ve arrived at the lip of the beginning; the mark of starting over.

They could repeat the pattern of the past until there is truly nothing left between them or they could turn back, going against the flow of time, repairing what’s broken.

They are trapped in this circle but there is always a choice to repeat or to repair.

He thinks of Madi and what he’s done, what he couldn’t be and what was deserved. He thought that no one truly got what they deserved, not in this life or this pattern but he was wrong. It’s the ‘giving up’ that falsifies that notion that there is no recovery for that _‘deserved’_ future. He knows one can amend expectations and form new ones. Silver thinks in circles now but not without ladders to climb out of.

To break the pattern is to give-up a part of the repulsion he feels for himself.

He dunks his head underwater to push the hair away sticking to his cheeks and he runs his fingers through his unruly beard that hides his face.

To go back could require a physical step and he’s nearly out of those.

He swims to the shore through the tumble of the waves towards his crutch resting in the sand.

The sea is behind him and that shadowed house of his is in front.

Once on shore, he lifts himself from the sand with his crutch and heads for that house, stepping back inside of it and dressing in the tattered clothes he’s cleaned earlier.

He spends the next hour staring at his reflection in a stained mirror, removing his beard with a sharpened straight razor that nicks his skin when his expression twitches.

There is a man beneath it all, a man he recognizes but has avoided for some time now. He’s aged, with dark circles under his eyes, he’s paler, thinner and lacking a sly smile.

When he’s as clean shaven as he can manage without mangling his face, he cuts his hair. He cuts it to the top of his shoulders, releasing the rest at his feet. The ends of the strands being where he began and now is sweeping away.

He resembles an exhausted version of the John Silver that took the Spanish Warship with his captain that time ago.

This in itself is a disguise of its own but to return to the living world he must look like one of them, the wanderers that meander in town perusing the market stands. He mustn’t resemble a specter any longer.

There are webs collecting in the corners of the rooms of spiders long dead and he wipes them away, freeing the bones of the house. He sweeps away the dead leaves that have blown inside, along with the sand that now clings to all things.

He opens the curtains that are filled with dust and he coughs against the onslaught of it. The dreary light is now shyly crawling inside, examining a place it has yet to travel. It slides over the furniture and across the dark fireplace and over Silver’s form. The muted light is enough to make this place visible and pull the house from his memory into his present.

Silver travels into town and can already see that the frightened looks he used to receive aren’t there any longer. Although some still gawk at his missing leg, it is nothing but passing curiosity that he’s grown used to.

He approaches the same man at the fruit stand that turned him away and asks again, “any work?”

The man slid a basket of apples to the front to display and without much of a glance says, “the tavern is always looking for work.”

The man almost seemed polite as if he didn’t recognize him even though he had the same crutch.

Silver finds himself a moment later in front of the swaying wooden sign of the old tavern that never looked like much in the dreary light of day. He swallows thickly and fidgets on his crutch, glancing down at his boot and the wisps of sand carried away by the sea breeze.  

He can’t do it. Not yet.

_Not yet._

\--

**\--Winter--**

**\--**

The chill settles in the landscape. The clouds are relentless but there is no storm between them. There is nothing to rage at.

Flint sits on his newly built porch and peels potatoes with a small knife. The monotony of releasing the skin from his fingers sends his thoughts back in time to a young cook, a young liar. Was he mourning him too? The image is still fresh in his memory of Silver looking back at him from his attempts at cooking a pig.

It makes him think of Miranda kindling the fireplace and the comfort of the crackle that was born from her hands brought him true peace. The potato slips from his fingers and falls to the ground and he nearly slices open his palm. He presses the blade against his skin not yet breaking it but on the verge. He thinks of Eleanor’s head resting in that same hand of his and her eyes blinking up at him.

_‘Was it him?’_

_‘No.’_

He could carve all of their names into his skin to make himself into a totem for them but there is no coming back from such an act. He lifts the blade from his palm and grabs another dusty potato to peel.

That night Flint dreams of London, of the soft ticking of a clock and the warm shadows given life by the candles. Only this time, Flint is who is now, stepping through the house he grew to know like the beat of his heart.

He walks through the large sitting room that frames the window. A light rain patters against it, sending streaks across the glass. He spots his reflection, the one that is melded in both McGraw and Flint.

They were always the same man except now they overlap, finally united after a long battle.

He pushes the door to Thomas’ study open but no one is there, he isn’t there, she isn’t there.

He sits in the stiff chair in front of the desk which rests in the shadowed patterns of the rain from the window in the background. He wonders if Meditations still resides here in this other world but he doesn’t see it. It’s not on his desk.

“I’m to let you go again,” Flint speaks softly to the quiet.

He thinks if he were here, in the space inside his head, he would say in an echo of Miranda’s voice, _‘you are not alone’_

Those past moments are like old rooms he passes by with closed doors and sometimes he can open them and find the furniture untouched. The sounds are the same but they’re devoid of the people that made them meaningful in the first place.

To put away a memory is to fold in on himself like a letter; creased at the edge.

He closes his eyes, listening to the patter of the rain that doesn’t abate even when he wakes.

His room is dark and quiet. The rain outside taps against the glass like his dream. He sits up running his hands through his hair before standing.

He makes his way to the window that faces the sea and glances out to the blurry wet day to see Silver’s house which is silent to him.

He wonders if he will spend the rest of his days catching glimpses of a drunken fool or will step beyond this barrier into somewhere new?

He misses him. That much is true but Silver can’t be his torment any longer and Flint can no longer be his.

In the coming days of restoring this house to the light, he finds solitude again in the hammering, the crash of the violent sea and the feel of a restless wind calling him across the water.

It’s around then that Flint decides to build a boat. It wouldn’t be anything extravagant, of course, but he’d sand the wood and create his very own fishing hovel.

There are no more ferocious storms, only rain, which splash his cheeks kindly and heavily dampens his clothes. He’s grown used to the constant pitter-patter, it’s a familiar song in tune with the tide.

He spends most of his days after that refining the wood, hunched over the makings of his small meager boat beneath the sky.

There is something soothing in building a boat from his grief as if one can make use of ashes.

\--

Time has little meaning here at the edge.

Silver recognizes it pass him by but to tame it has been an impossible feat.

His house has awakened from its slumber and stretches of light now live in corners where only darkness reigned. He rearranged his living quarters and often has a fire going when he arrives home from work. He works at the docks to help maintain the ships that harbor there.

The dock itself isn’t large or that populated but its enough to keep his mind busy.

He sometimes sits on the pier there with his leg dangling over the edge, above the water but never quite touching the surface.

Is there still a story on the horizon? Or has he already shut the book and this is his end?

He wouldn’t mind either of those realities. He’s grown used to this place, at first through drunken stumblings but now awake, no longer haunting the shore.

And he’s grown used to the sound of hammering echoes from Flint’s property but he’s hardly visible and unable to see what it is he’s actually working on.

That night he leaves a candle flickering in the window so that when he sits on the beach he can look back at his house like a beacon of light. The shore beckons him in and he grips a handful of sand to let it slowly fall from his fingers.

Is every grain important? Or is it the _whole_ of it that is? The journey back down into the sand?

Silver has never had a true home, he was always moving, always becoming new people with the same smile. He thinks he’s lost the will to run or to pretend any longer.

He is simply John Silver and that’s all that really matters.

When he goes to bed he doesn’t dream of hidden horrors, even if the guilt remains. He’s grown to understand it; the way one understands the origin of self-hatred. It will always be there but it’s quieted down from its roar of the past.

There is peace in monotony, there is peace on his walk home from work in the half-light where the sun is always hidden from view.

No one asks what’s happened to his leg, they mostly leave him be because that’s how he prefers it. He’s told all the stories he’s needed to tell.  Even if the echoing stomp of his boot remains in the background.

The groan of a ship that isn’t there speaks, _‘Next item!’_

\--

**\--Spring—**

**\--**

It’s the first day without rain in months but the sun is yet to be freed from its prison.

Flint stands at the edge of the sand with a small smile on his face, his hair has grown out again and he looks like less of a pirate by each passing day.

He’s observing the small fishing boat he’s finished, the wood sanded to something pristine and he steps up inside it to test the stress of the wood.

It was more than ready to be taken on a journey out to sea.

He spots Silver limping home from work and watches as he disappears inside his home. Flint knew he worked at the docks. He spotted him sitting on the pier when he went into town reminiscing with the sea in silence.

He wished to approach him then, end the separation and be done with the grief but he hadn’t been ready then. He hadn’t been ready to return the sentiments that were whispered to him that stormy night. He’s gotten better. He knows that Silver has found a new rhythm in himself and perhaps learned to forgive whatever may lurk in his subconscious.

It had struck him while observing Silver enter his house alone that no matter how much time may hold them to silence, they are bound to this shore but not as ghosts but as two men who find reason to live beneath the rain.

He runs a cloth along the edge of the boat and rests it there before walking through the sand along the sea that reaches out for him. He stops his feet, looking at Silver’s house ahead like a dream. Part of him thinks it’s better to turn back, to never know what could have been but that is something for his old self to ponder, not the him that is in the present.

 He walks to his door, noticing the front window open to the sea breeze and he knocks once.

His heart trips from the sound of the crutch inching closer to the door and when Silver opens it Flint observes the one from the past, standing in front of him. He looks well rested, his curly dark hair is to his shoulders and he’s without a beard.

He has an expression of surprise branded with fearful hope. Both of them are afraid to speak to make this encounter real. Flint is tempted to step away so that he can breathe again but before he can manage any reprieve, Silver asks, “is everything all right?”

Flint studies his face but it does nothing to calm his heart and he forces his eyes away to the background of Silver’s house which looks pleasantly inviting.

“I want to show you something,” Flint admits and he watches with a swelling nervousness as Silver’s guarded expression begins to fall away.

“What is it?” Silver asks and Flint steps out onto the sand as he waits for Silver to follow, closing the door to his house behind him.

There is still no sun but enough light remains muffled on the horizon.

Flint says nothing, he stays in tune with Silver’s steps and he listens to the softness of his breath with each limp.

“How long has it been?” Silver asks a little melancholic.

_…since he walked out of his door._

“I don’t know,” is all that Flint replies with.

He takes Silver to the back of his house and gestures confidently with his hands towards the finished wooden boat. He observes Silver’s eyes brighten and a genuine smile is gifted to him.

“You built a boat,” He surmises and leans comfortably against his crutch.

“I did and I wish to bring it to the sea but I didn’t want to do it alone,” Flint admits and then asks, “will you help me?”

Silver huffs as he looks out to the waves beside them as his eyes become glassy.

“I…” He starts and then stops but Flint can wait. He’s waited for these words and for time to grant him this moment.

Silver continues, “It’s no Walrus but yes, I’ll help.”

\--

Silver feels as though he’s collapsing but he keeps a straight face as Flint shoves the boat into the waves. The freeing excitement that Flint displays nearly drives him to tears as if he’s lost his goddamn mind in the fondness of it.

The last thing he expected was for Flint to show up at his door unannounced and then as if someone lit a candle inside of him, it was like they never separated.

Now beneath the darkening sky, he recognizes a deeper peace, one nearly unattainable but now clear.

It takes some maneuvering before they are able to get inside the boat, especially from Silver who had to hand Flint his crutch as he floated in the chilled sea.

Once inside and beyond the chaos of the newborn waves, they sit in the boat within the still glass water; soaked and panting. Flint rows them further out until the daylight disappears and he lights a lantern at the edge of the boat.

“I don’t see any way for us to fish without the proper materials?” Silver questions and Flint nods, moving back to sit in front of him.

The boat is small but beautifully crafted and Silver slides his hand comfortingly over the wood. They stare at one another, in front of the other, close enough to bump knees.

Flint is already so much different than the tormented one he left behind. He appears lighter, more open with his expressions and it both thrills and terrifies Silver all at once.

They are the verge of something, like the beginning or the end but then they always have been.

“I wanted to be something that brought you sorrow. I wanted to form a hatred for you and I thought that I had managed it on the journey here from Savannah but then I saw you and I came to understand you once again. We already were possessing one another and I think even if Thomas had lived, you and I would have still been each other’s torment but now…” Flint halts his speech and moves the oar onto the boat, wetting their boots.

“Now, there is time,” Flint adds and he looks beyond Silver to the stilled murky water.

Silver lets the words collect between them before asking, “You must know that I never wished to form a hell between us. I thought I was giving him back to you, despite my own thoughts on the matter or the repressed notions. Have you brought me here to make such our separation permeant as a form of closure? Or is this something else entirely?”

Flint can’t seem to look at him and Silver’s hope begins to crumble in its fragile state.

“Closure then?” Silver breathes and leans back, his mind reeling.

Flint’s expression holds a depleted sorrow but there’s fear beneath it, fear to speak to let loose the finality.

“My God…” Flint replies and his voice trembles. Silver remains like a statue, afraid to move, dreading but anticipating the next words, “…I’ve tried not to love you. I raged against it, I couldn’t allow it in but it was already there.”

He finally meets Silver’s eyes then and the apprehension falls away like the final stage of erosion.

“When I heard the sound of your crutch approaching the door, I knew I had not heard a single thing that would grant me with more relief than that. You are in every part of me. The torment that I gave myself was that I didn’t allow those echoes of you in. I let them twist into something dark and that was not your making but it was mine. I cannot live moment to moment without that sound. The sound of you approaching is the truest form of pleasure I’ve ever known.”

Silver couldn’t will himself to breath, he feels trapped and held by those eyes in front of him, in this darkness of the sea, in this boat that he built. It’s like a soundless melody one never forgets the cadence of.

“You forgive me,” Silver says, pathetically because he couldn’t form anything else.

“I love you, in this place, without this place, in this world and without it,” Flint replies and starts a spark within Silver’s ribs.

Flint reaches out lightly and places his palm on Silver’s thigh. The warmth of it could burn him up.

Silver rests his hand on top of his and their fingers slowly slot together. There is nothing that Silver could desire more than this open space with two hearts.

“What did you name it?” Silver asks with a small smile.

“This boat? It doesn’t have a name, not yet,” Flint replies softly and moves to sit in the tight space beside him. He lifts his palm to Silver’s cheek and their noses brush.

“I suspect you’d name it something like ‘The Odyssey’ or something equally profound?” Silver mocks and Flint has a matching tired grin. He presses forward sharing the other’s air and Flint connects his lips to his.

It’s all together gently bewitching.  

Silver slides his hand up to Flint’s neck to keep him there, hold him in place as if he could somehow disappear as if Silver could wake up in his bed alone again.

Their tongues meet in soft greeting, one tasting the other and its become an engraved pact.

Flint releases their lips with a quiet breath and Silver asks him with flushed cheeks, “Or you’d name it as an ode to The Revenge, to hunt merchant vessels with your harpoon?”

Flint scoffs and then collapses into him, pushing them to the bottom of the boat and rocking it in the calm water.

This time they fumble awkwardly between one another, their mouths roughening, their hands griping and waning until Flint hovers above Silver beneath the dimmed moonlight like an imagined visage. As if Neptune came to possess him.

“I wish to name it ‘Miranda’,” Flint speaks as though he’s far away and then he lowers himself, wrapping his arms around Silver’s torso tightly, resting his head over his heart.

Silver rests his arms on his back, setting his lips on the top of Flint’s head, breathing him in; cataloging his familiar scent.

They are cradled warmly in the comfort of the sea as the clouds evaporate to reveal a shy half-moon.

“Miranda it is,” Silver replies kindly and he thinks somehow this way he could get to know the woman that meant so much to Flint. It was as if they were slipping into sleep within her palm.

\--

Once night slips into day, they finally wake, wrapped within each other sleepily. Flint listens for a moment to the thudding of the heart beneath him. He had known this love that could destroy them by remolding them; they are evolving in each other’s orbit.  

They row the boat back to shore, pulling it gently onto the sand as Silver sticks his crutch beside him to gain his balance once again.

They are shoulder to shoulder looking over the calm tide that welcomes them ashore.

Silver catches Flint’s wrist, fitting his fingers around it like a cuff.

“This feels like something I dreamt or that I’m in a state of dreaming,” Silver chances and they both catch the other’s eyes.

“I am real, you are real, the rest doesn’t matter,” Flint supplies because it never truly did. This dance, even when they were tearing each other apart, has been the most important piece within the make of who they are.

Silver graces him with a soft unsure smile and he wants to press his lips to the corners to make him believe it.

“Let us have this,” Silver replies.

They retreat to Flint’s house with a strange energy between them, pushing through the door and then tumbling onto the floor. The door creaks partially closed and they are all tongues and teeth; singing and alive.

Flint let’s Silver study the freckled skin of his shoulder once their clothes have been divested and strewn haphazardly around them.  

He’s never felt so in tune with himself as he did with Silver’s skin beneath his and his heaving chest pulls soft-spoken confessions from his lips.

Flint runs his finger over a scar that rests on Silver’s hip before he moves to taste it and gather all the whimpers he can collect from him.

He’s decided his new favorite thing to observe is to watch Silver come apart by his fingers, his hands, his tongue.

This is a reversal, a starting point far from their scribbled maps of long-dead sunken ships.

Flint thinks this is what coming home feels like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hope you enjoyed this! Please let me know what you think! This was an angst fest but I hope you liked the happy ending! Thank you for reading, it means the world :)


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